Hospital closing leaves families desperate

April 10, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Delicia McFarland, foreground, and some of the 32 families with highly disabled children pose in the front courtyard of the Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin Monday. The hospital is expected to close in the coming weeks. The families cannot afford to provide the kind of intensive, high-tech care their children need at home. Other facilities that could accommodate their children are more than a day trip away. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Doug Harris of Long Beach displays photos of his son Markcus Harris, 14, who is a patient at Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin. The hospital is expected to close in the coming weeks. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Marina Abarca holds a photo of her cousin Angela Sotelo, 2, who is a patient at Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin. Marina's mother, Noelia Abarca, is at left. Angela Sotelo's parents, Angel Sotelo and Maria Gomez, are at right. The hospital is expected to close in the coming weeks. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Delicia McFarland poses with her daughter Cheyenne and son Allen near the front of Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin on Monday. Allen suffers from global brain damage and can only eat and breathe with the help of tubes. He is a patient at the hospital, a facility expected to close in the coming weeks. H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Delicia McFarland, foreground, and some of the 32 families with highly disabled children pose in the front courtyard of the Newport Specialty Hospital in Tustin Monday. The hospital is expected to close in the coming weeks. The families cannot afford to provide the kind of intensive, high-tech care their children need at home. Other facilities that could accommodate their children are more than a day trip away.H. LORREN AU JR., ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A troubled year for hospital chain

Aug. 23, 2012: Pacific Health Corp. agrees to pay $16 million to settle federal criminal charges that it paid kickbacks to recruit sham patients from Skid Row in Los Angeles and bilk the Medicare and Medi-Cal programs. A subsidiary, Los Angeles Doctors Hospital, pleads guilty to the kickback scheme, while the parent company signs a six-year deferred prosecution agreement. A doctor and an executive at Newport Specialty Hospital also plead guilty.

Delicia McFarland's son, Allen, has extensive brain damage following complications from a brain tumor. All four of his limbs are paralyzed, and he can eat and breathe only through tubes. He receives round-the-clock care at the pediatric subacute unit of Newport Specialty Hospital.

But that care might soon dry up. The Tustin hospital is scheduled to close in May after its financially troubled parent company, Pacific Health Corp., said recently it could no longer afford to operate the facility or three others it owns, including Anaheim General.

The decision by Pacific Health is causing extreme distress for McFarland and the parents of 31 other pediatric patients, many of them with severe brain damage and paralysis caused by catastrophic injuries, illnesses or congenital disabilities. The kids are being cared for by hospital staffers, some of whom say they haven't been paid for weeks and are frequently reaching into their own pockets to buy essential supplies that the company is no longer able to provide.

The situation is so dire that one parent recently drove to another Orange County hospital to plead for ties for children's tracheotomy tubes, according to hospital employees.

So far, state and county regulators have not reassured worried parents.

The patients' families are all on Medi-Cal, the state's federally subsidized health insurance program for low-income people, Pacific Health said. Most of them could not afford to care for their children at home – even though the hospital's CEO, Richard Luna, suggested that they consider doing just that, according to parents who attended a meeting with him Friday.

The parents said Luna told them their children could be transferred temporarily to Children's Hospital of Orange County or to children's units at hospitals in Loma Linda and Long Beach.

CHOC made clear it could not accommodate the kids for any significant period of time, saying Tuesday in a written statement that the long-term care the Newport patients need "is a service not currently offered at CHOC Children's or at the majority of other children's hospitals in the state. There are only 10 pediatric subacute facilities in California, and they provide a vital service for children who have been discharged from the hospital but continue to need care for chronic medical conditions."

Long-term beds for severely disabled children are in short supply, and many parents are contemplating the prospect of a transfer to facilities farther afield, in Los Angeles, San Bernardino or San Diego counties.

That could greatly complicate the lives of people who work – sometimes long hours – and then spend most of their non-working hours at the bedsides of their hospitalized children.

"This is the closest place for all the parents here," said Teresa Harris, whose 14-year old son, Markcus, suffered brain damage after a near-fatal asthma attack two years ago. "It's too hard to try to get to San Diego or San Bernardino, or Sun Valley. It's crazy."

Bernard Broermann, the German hospital mogul who founded Pacific Health Corp. nearly 30 years ago and appears on the Forbes list of billionaires, said he had arranged loans up through the beginning of this year to try to keep the U.S. company afloat. But in the end he was unable to continue extending credit. "We all lost and I am very frustrated that I was unable to save the company for its patients and employees," Broermann said in an email.

"Of course I will do everything I can to make sure that the pediatric unit in Tustin is maintained and that the other hospitals can open their services again and the employees can regain their jobs," he pledged. A spokesman for Broermann said the company is negotiating with "experienced hospital operators" to sell the Tustin facility, and that "a successful transaction is expected."

Last August, Pacific Health agreed to pay a settlement of $16.5 million after admitting it had recruited homeless people to declare bogus symptoms and undergo unnecessary medical procedures. More recently, it was fined more than $7 million by the California Department of Labor Relations for bouncing checks and failing to pay wages.

Meanwhile, many of Newport Specialty's employees have not been paid for a month or more and some were recently put on furlough, according to people who work at the hospital or did until recently. Staff members continue to provide the intensive care required by the children, not knowing when or whether their next paycheck will come.

And they are laboring under the hardship caused by a shortage of critical supplies, since Pacific Health is far behind on payments to vendors, according to the company's own account of the situation.

Several employees confirmed that at various times over the past months, Newport Specialty has been short of gowns, gloves, thermometers, food for the feeding tubes and crucial medications. Employees of the hospital and parents of the patients have chipped in to purchase what was needed, according to numerous accounts.

"I personally have opened my wallet several times to buy baby wipes, baby diapers, adult diapers and thermometers. Many of us have," said Danny Flores, the purchasing manager for Newport Specialty and Anaheim General. Like some of his colleagues, Flores was put on a two-week furlough starting Monday.

Flores held out his cellphone to show a text message from a worker in the pediatric unit who described a scene from the previous night during which a parent became enraged to learn there were no ties for the children's tracheotomy tubes – which must be replaced every day – and drove toCHOC to "beg" for some. CHOC acceded to his request and he drove back to Newport Specialty with the newly acquired supplies.

Parents are also providing snacks and full meals to the hospital staff members who are looking after their children, according to various accounts.

Harris is one of those parents. "I've gone and bought dinner for them all, and I am not a millionaire. I want to show them I appreciate what they are doing," she said.

"The staff is not getting paid. They are taking care of these kids because they have a bond with them. But they have bills to pay. I don't know from one day to the next if they are going to still be here."

CalOptima, which administers the Medi-Cal program for Orange County, sent a team of inspectors to the hospital Monday night, and the team reported that everything was in order, said Kellie Todd, the agency's spokeswoman. "The welfare of the kids was very good," she said, and the inspectors, who are nurses, reported no supply shortages.

CalOptima is working with the Orange County Health Care Agency to identify suitable facilities where the children could be transferred "in case we need to act quickly," Todd said, though she added that she could not name any at the present time.

Lynn Einarsonn-Woods, local division manager at California Children's Services, a state body administered by the Orange County Health Care Agency, confirmed that her office and CalOptima are working together to find the best solution for the children at Newport Specialty. But "we just got wind of this yesterday," she said.

She said there are facilities in Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties that could absorb the children. "We are looking at all levels of care to see their needs are met," she added, suggesting that some of the patients might not require quite the same intensity of care as others. "There are different levels of in-patient care," she said.

The parents of Newport Specialty's pediatric patients, meanwhile, are growing increasingly concerned about the shortage of answers.

Joshua Kinder, a Long Beach resident whose 3-year-old son, Jak, was born with a congenital heart disease and has been at Newport Specialty since January 2011, voiced the anxiety being felt by many of the parents.

Even if they manage to get Jak a bed in an acute-care unit such as Los Angeles Children's Hospital, it will only be temporary, since the limit on such a stay is 100 days, Kinder said. He lost his job in August and now has the time to care for his son, but lacks the space and financial wherewithalï¿½ to take him home.

"We have very (few) options," he said. "It's like searching for a needle in a haystack."

Naomi Friedrich, whose 7-year-old son, Jeremy, was severely disabled after accidentally hanging himself with a jump rope, said she feared Newport would start "shipping the kids out to regular hospitals," which do not have the same long-term care capability. "I don't even know if they are going to take into consideration where we live. I'm praying that they do because I don't want to drive to Los Angeles," said Friedrich, a resident of Fullerton.

Einarsonn-Woods of California Children's Services sought to allay the concerns of parents who fear they may be left to fend for themselves. "We don't leave it to the parents," she said. "There will be a way."

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